The Fathers distinguish between blameworthy and unblameworthy human passions. St. John of Damascus says that in assuming human nature, the Logos also freely assumed what St. John calls the “unblameworthy passions,” such as “hunger, thirst, weariness, labor, tears, decay, shrinking from death, fear, agony with the bloody sweat, succor at the hands of Angels because of the weakness of nature, and other such like passions which belong by nature to every man.”
Let us see what some of the Fathers have said about our Lord’s cry from the Cross.
(1) “And that the words Why hast Thou forsaken Me? are His…(though He suffered nothing, for the Word was impassible), is notwithstanding declared by the Evangelists; since the Lord became man, and these things are done and said as from a man, that He might Himself lighten these very sufferings of the flesh, and free it from them. Whence neither can the Lord be forsaken by the Father, Who is ever in the Father, both before He spoke, and when He uttered this cry. Nor is it lawful to say that the Lord was in terror, at Whom the gatekeepers of Hades shuddered and set open Hades, and the graves did gape, and many bodies of the saints arose and appeared to their own people”
St. Athanasios the Great, “Discourses against the Arians,” III.29, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. IV [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978], p. 424
(2) “Yet, I suppose, you [Arians who argued that the Logos was not coeternal with the Father, on the ground He displayed signs of weakness] will arm yourselves also for your godless contention with these words of the Lord, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? Perhaps you think that after the disgrace of the Cross, the favour of His Fathers help departed from Him, and hence His cry that He was left alone in His weakness. But if you regard the contempt, the weakness, the cross of Christ as a disgrace, you should remember His words, Verily I say unto you, From henceforth ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power, and coming with the clouds of Heaven”
St. Hilary of Poitiers, “On the Trinity,” X.31, A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. IX [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1978], p. 190
(3) “And thus, He Who subjects presents to God that which He has subjected, making our condition His own. Of the same kind, it appears to me, is the expression, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? It was not He who was forsaken either by the Father, or by His own Godhead, as some have thought, as if It were afraid of the Passion, and therefore withdrew Itself from Him in His sufferings (for who compelled Him either to be born on earth at all, or to be lifted up on the Cross?). But as I said, He was in His own Person representing us. For we were the forsaken and despised before, but now by the Sufferings of Him Who could not suffer, we were taken up and saved. Similarly, He makes His own our folly and our transgressions; and says what follows in the Psalm, for it is very evident that the Twenty-first Psalm refers to Christ”
St. Gregory the Theologian, “Fourth Theological Oration,” 30.5, Patrologia Græca, Vol. XXXVI, col. 109A
(4) “He saith, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that unto His last breath they might see that He honors His Father, and is no adversary of God. Wherefore also He uttered a certain cry from the Prophet, even to His last hour bearing witness to the Old Testament, and not simply a cry from the Prophet, but also in Hebrew, so as to be plain and intelligible to them, and by all things, He shows how He is of one mind with Him that begat Him”
St. John Chrysostomos, “Homilies on St. Matthew,” 88.1, Patrologia Græca, Vol. LVIII, col. 776
(5) “The cry My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? is the utterance of Adam, who trampled on the commandment given to him and disregarded Gods Law; thus did God abandon human nature, which had become accursed. When the Only-begotten Word of God came to restore fallen man, the abandonment entailed by that curse and corruption had to come to an end. My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me? is the voice of Him Who destroyed our forsakenness, as if He were imploring the Father to be gracious to mankind. When, as man, He asks for something, it is for us; as God, He was in need of nothing”
St. Cyril of Alexandria, “Second Oration to the Empresses on the True Faith,” 18, Patrologia Græca, Vol. LXXVI, col. 1357A
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